This invention relates to an electronic card used for a plurality of applications, for example, credit, banking, and reservations including the purchasing of airline and train tickets, reserved seat tickets, hotel room reservations, etc.
Magnetic or embossed cards, for example, have been used for credit purchases. Also, there has been a trend toward the widespread use of IC cards with built-in IC chips storing personal identification numbers.
Magnetic cards and IC cards each, perform only a single function for credit purchases. When making credit purchases, a calculator for the totaling and checking of the credit purchases must be carried separately.
To cope with this, the applicant of the present application filed a patent application (Ser. No. 711,422) filed Mar. 13, 1985, which discloses a card-like electronic apparatus having both a calculation function and an identification function.
However, the card apparatus must be operable in multiple applications. Credit companies each employ a different terminal and a different method of processing for the credit card for each of the applications, such as credit buying, banking, airplane reservations, and hotel room reservations. Accordingly, a need arises for identifying the application from the terminal side. Many credit cards are needed for the respective applications. This results in inconvenience of carrying the cards, and checking to see if items have been lost or not. Since this card apparatus uses a solar cell as a power source, no on/off control switch is necessary, but the inconvenience arises in maintaining data in the memory and operation in dark places. When a dry battery cell is used in place of the solar cell, an on/off control switch must be used. In this case, in the card apparatus using an electronic device to check if that apparatus is compatible with the terminal used, when it is inserted into the terminal, the inconvenience occurs in which the transporting roller for the card apparatus, which is set in the terminal, makes the key contact, and the on and off states of the control switch before its insertion are changed.